Google-owned Motorola Mobility has come to an agreement with an online payment company Xoom Corp to stop using the Xoom moniker for its tablet devices. This comes after they filed a lawsuit against Motorola stating that they had already trademarked the name. This will come as another blow to Motorola after a few years of falling sales and some less than spectacular devices.
The American Lawyer is reporting that Motorola and Xoom Corp came to a confidential agreement which requires them to phase out the use of the name in their tablet line-up.
The Xoom tablet line didn’t do so well despite being the first tablet to ship with Android 3.0 (Honeycomb). Regardless of having decent specs for the time they only managed to ship around 1 million units in 2011, this was possibly due to the high cost of the device with the WiFi only version starting at $600 and the cellular version starting at a whopping $799 upon release.
After being acquired by Google for $12.5bn back in May 2012 Motorola seemed to be getting back on track with the release of the much anticipated Moto X however early reviews about the handset have been less than kind. Motorola have hit back at this saying that a phone isn’t all about specs, it’s about the experience and customization options that the Moto X offers. That is all well and good but most hardcore Android fans will be likely to stay away from the X as its mid-range specs don’t justify its high end price tag.
We should expect Motorola to carry on releasing tablets under a new brand, maybe something incorporating the letter X which would tie in with the branding on their newest flagship.